Holodomor website: a brief history

The Website has been in existence since 2007, when webmistress Natasha (Natalka) Sazonova and the newly formed Connecticut Holodomor Awareness Committee initiated the project to showcase the Committee’s work and to bring a basic awareness of the Holodomor to the community. The Committee is an unaffiliated, non-profit organization.

Today, the website’s primary objective is to serve as a trusted, regularly updated source world-wide for authoritative and educationally sound English language materials about the Holodomor.

The website was featured in “Teachers’ Resources,” The Social Studies Professional: newsletter of the National Council on the Social Studies. (Jan/Feb 2015).

The team consists of volunteers Lana Babij, who selects, evaluates, and manages the information resources – often in consultation with scholars and educators throughout North America; and Natasha Sazonova, the website developer, designer, and webmistress.

Our Volunteers:

Lana Babij

Lana Babij, (BA, MLS) is a retired professional librarian who spent many years providing academic access and reference services at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Since 2009, she has engaged in numerous projects related to Holodomor awareness: curated exhibits at the University of Connecticut libraries; co-presented two teaching clinics at the annual Northeast Regional Conference for the Social Studies; attended and reported on the University of Manitoba Institute of Social Justice seminar; and was an invited speaker at Holodomor education conferences in 2013 and 2017 sponsored by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC). In 2018, she was invited to speak at the Visualizing the Holodomor Conference in Kyiv, Ukraine about the project she initiated with the support of HREC, of developing an online directory of authentic Holodomor photographs. With assistance from her colleagues at HREC, the first edition of the online Holodomor Photo Directory was completed and launched in November 2020. In April 2021, She joined HREC and other colleagues in an online discussion about photography and censorship in the USSR during the Holodomor, sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Univ. of Alberta.

Natasha Sazonova

Natasha Sazonova is a professional artist and illustrator. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut and a Master’s Certificate in Graphic Design from Sessions School of Art & Design. So far Ms. Sazonova had participated in over fifty Fine Art exhibits in galleries and museums throughout the United States, and created work for clients from every continent except for Antarctica.

Over the years, she took part in a number of public art events, with several world-famous Cow Parades among them. Her artwork was featured on the covers of both local and national magazines, with her piece dedicated to the Holodomor entitled “Descended from the survivors of the forgotten genocide” featured on the cover of “UNWLA Our Life”, a national magazine for the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America.